Make It Last – Ep 159 – The Great Resignation

January 15, 2022

This week on Make It Last, Victor and Mark discuss why people are retiring early due to the pandemic.

They’ll also be talking about the advantages and disadvantages between personal retirement funds and pension plans.

What are required distributions? What do they mean? Why do we even care about required minimum distributions?

Find out all of this and more on this week’s episode of Make It Last.

Are You Paying Too Much in Taxes in Retirement? Download the FREE Guide

Also available on SpotifyApple Podcasts, & Google Podcasts

Make It Last with Victor Medina is hosted by Victor J. Medina, an estate planning and Certified Elder Law Attorney (CELA) and Certified Financial Planner professional (CFP). Through his law firm and independent registered investment advisory company, Victor provides 360º Wealth Protection Strategies for individuals in or nearing retirement.

Full Transcription Below

Mark Elliot:  Welcome to “Make It Last” with Victor Medina. I’m Mark Elliot, glad you’re with us today. Victor has two companies, the Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth. Started Medina Law Group back in 2006. Victor is a practicing estate planning and Certified Elder Law Attorney.

The Medina Law Group here to help you come up with all the things you need for estate and legacy planning and all of that. Now, it ties in though, to retirement plan, because Victor would have people come in and go, “Why can’t you help me with all my retirement planning?”

There’s no reason I can’t. So, Victor, being the student that he is, went back to school a little bit and now is a Certified Financial Planner professional, a registered investment advisor, and that is Palante Wealth. They focus on holistic planning for your retirement. That business started in 2014.

They work together, the Medina Law, Palante Wealth, coming up with an income strategy, investment strategies, tax strategies, estate planning. All of the things you need for retirement are in these two companies, and they’re both here to help.

If you have any questions about any of this, when it comes to your retirement, do you understand where your income’s going to come from? Are you investing the right way? What about if taxes go up? How will that affect you? Do you have an estate plan in place?

Because we’re not guaranteed tomorrow, so there’s no point in putting all of this off. You can do a plan right now at 50, for example, and then maybe it’s 70, you change it. That’s certainly the idea behind this is that none of these plans are just written in stone.

They’re always evolving because life happens to us. They’re always being updated all the time. If you’d like to learn more, you can always give the team a call. It’s 856‑506‑8300. There’s no cost. There’s no obligation for this. 856‑506‑8300.

It is 2022, so I thought it’d be fun. We’re going to talk a about some of the things that we should be getting ready to. If 2022 is year you’re retire, what are some of the things you should do? What if it’s 2023? We’re getting closer and closer to that retirement date, and it’s really interesting.

I watched “60 Minutes,” I don’t know week or so ago, and they were talking about the great resignation. There was like, I don’t know, it was over two million people have quit their jobs and they’re not really retiring. They’re just quitting their job and going to sit back and figure out what they’re going to do.

Before the pandemic, these are some of the numbers that came out to there. I want to get your take on this. This came from the LinkedIn person that was their special guest on this topic, and she’s got PhD, masters, all that kind of stuff. She said before the pandemic, 1 in 67 workers worked remotely. 1 in 67. Now, it’s one in seven workers, across the country, work remotely.

Are you surprised by that number?

Victor Medina:  I think the number probably totally consistent with what I’ve heard. I would imagine that the other people that have to work in‑person are because their jobs require them, meat packing, those kinds of things where it’s not even an option.

My experience has been that if your job is capable of going remote, you did that over this period of time and sometimes for the better, in the sense of that people maintained efficiency so on and so forth. Sometimes not so great as we look at what’s been going on with kids and the effect of not being in school, trying to do school remotely.

I’ve got my own three and they’re much happier and much better meeting in‑person. It took getting the vaccines and some other stuff before the school were just ready to do that in here around New Jersey, Pennsylvania. There are some places where it works out well and there are some places where it doesn’t.

The number doesn’t at all surprise me nor does the concept of people revisiting or thinking about, Mark, what they’re going to do instead of working.

I can tell you. COVID hit March 2020. I got a rush of phone calls from a lot of school teachers because we didn’t know what we were going to be doing that June. Generally, their contracts will go from July to the end of June.

When that June came up, they reached out and said, “Hey, I’ve been thinking about retiring. Can I do it? Will I be OK? I don’t know what going to work is going to be like going in there. I don’t know if I’d be healthy if I showed up because all these people are going to be close to retirement age.” Probably a little bit more. Immune compromised or these risk factors a little higher for the older folks.

A lot of people are exploring exactly what you talked about in terms of this great resignation driving them to not necessarily retire from work like they wanted to do it, but just not want to work and figuring out if they can be OK not doing that.

Mark:  Absolutely. Even if somebody is ready to retire ‑‑ nothing driven by the pandemic or anything ‑‑ maybe just, “Hey, I’ve worked a long time. I want to go enjoy the rest of my life. Can I retire? Will I be OK?” That’s really what we want to know.

856‑506‑8300 if you’d like to chat with the team at Palante Wealth and Medina Law Group about your retirement. Can you do it? Will your money last as long as you do? Will your loved ones be OK if something happens to me? Those are really big questions. 856‑506‑8300.

Let’s go back 50 years, Victor. Let’s go back to 1972. Now you weren’t even born yet, right?

Victor:  No, I wasn’t. I was going to say to you, “We’re going to go back at a time I didn’t exist.” Tell me what went on before I was born, Mark.

Mark:  The fall of 1973 was my freshmen year in high school. I graduated in ’77 then I graduated from college because I played four years in the minor leagues for the daughters, so I’m back to college. I graduated at 24 in 1984.

It’s interesting when you think about it because the dollar amounts some people made and the cost of items are totally different from 50 years ago. Gas for example in 1972, 36 cents per gallon. The national average today is about $4.50 per gallon. Depending on where you are, it could be more expensive or it could be a little bit less.

36 cents per gallon, I remember starting to drive in ’73, ’74, and they’d have gas wars where the gas would be 28 cents a gallon or something.

The median family income in 1972 is $11,120. Median sale of a brand‑new home in 1972, $27,600. It’s really interesting, because now depending on where you are here, because the median price of a new home in 2020 was almost $337,000. If you’re in New York, LA, those places, you’re going to be paying a lot more than that for the average house.

Here’s the one I like though, Victor, because you weren’t even around at this point, so you wouldn’t remember this. I didn’t turn 18 until the November after I’d graduated from high school. Back when I was growing up, and at that age, you could drink beer at 18, but you could not drink liquor until 21.

When I was in college then or playing baseball, I couldn’t drink anything but beer if I was going to drink. Then at the age of 21, you could do whatever. In 1984, they’d standardized legal drinking age to 21. It’s interesting how that played out because it affected me to a degree.

That’s really what I remember from back then is whether I had to go to only to the bar, or could I slide into the club. That’s a big issues right there, ain’t it?

Victor:  At some point in time, people figured you getting drunk on beer was something easier to do than getting drink on liquor. I don’t know. I heard about the peculiarity of about the decoupling of the drinking age, but now in my entire adult’s legal‑to‑drink experience, it’s all been 21 for me.

Mark:  Because you think about it, that time, in a way, we were wrapping up Vietnam. In 1972 is when they started pulling people out. In 1975 is when they said, “OK, Vietnam War is over.” They’re like, “Wait a minute, I can go get killed for my country, and I can’t have a drink?” That doesn’t make any sense.

Victor:  Listen, I’ve always found that to be the weirdest, most disjointed concept out there is that we have people, who are adults for purposes of doing all the things that they’re absolutely at the biggest sacrifice, dying for your country.

Operating drones, firing guns, taking other people’s lives as part of military actions in there, that’s all OK, but having any sip of alcohol, it’s one of the things that the Europeans have been well advanced by de‑stigmatizing alcohol generally. It being a non‑event, you talk to Europeans, like my oldest son, Aiden, he got to spend a little time in Spain.

He stayed with another family, that they had a kid. That kid stayed with us. He’s like our adopted fourth child. If for them, it’s there’s no events that they have to go and celebrate, because they’ve all of a sudden have access to liquor on a legal basis.

For them, it’s not a thing. It leads to a lot more responsible relationships with alcohol than we see here in the United States. I can’t fathom how people can die for the country beat drafted fight at 18, but can’t go to the bar.

Mark:  One of the things though, that is similar to 2022 and 1972, would be inflation. Now, it was way higher, though. In the ’70s, you are double digit interest rates, double digit inflation, you get a home loan, and it’s 15, 17 percent, go get a CD, and it’s 15, 17 percent. It was just a different time.

Now, December 2021, inflation hit over seven percent. That is the highest we’ve had in 40 years. Where we are now and inflation, so inflation is a factor in today’s world like it was during the 1970s. Do you have to talk to your clients at Palante Wealth Medina Law Group about inflation?

Victor:  We do, and the difference is, is compared to the last time we saw numbers like that, we’re not seeing the increase in interest rates that usually follows that. Just like basic economic theory, when you have inflation, you have a devaluing of the dollar of the currency that you have, usual your dollar now doesn’t buy as much as it bought two days ago, or when the inflation was lower.

One of the things they do is in monetary policy is try to restrict the amount of money that’s out there, and what they do to do this, they increase interest rates so that it’s more expensive to borrow, so that it’s more expensive to access money. Those things have been tried and true ways of dealing with high inflation, that’s why we saw that.

By the way, I have a story about that. I remember that my parents telling me that there was a special rates for teachers when they were going to buy their first house in 1981. That if the first 1,500 people that got a mortgage at this particular bank in Bridgeport, Connecticut, which is where I was born and raised, they could be down to 13 percent.

They slept outside overnight to save four percent, because it was the only way that when you did that as numbers, it was anything that they could afford. We don’t see these higher interest rates and it’s something we have to talk about because a lot of people, Mark, have got cash on the sidelines as a way to have liquid funds that they can access whenever they need it. That’s a good strategy to have. You don’t want to be coming out of the market, because you need to replace your boiler or to buy a car.

The longer that cash sits on the sideline in a period of inflation, the less powerful that cash is to you. When you don’t have the higher interest rates in the bank, the way that you did in prior years, you have to seek out ways of being able to make up the fact that your dollar is not as valuable as it was before the inflation started to hit.

It is a big thing that we have to talk about. We don’t have to talk about its impact on their budget. It’s like, we now have to budget a little bit more, because your milk is going to be 6 percent more expensive, and everything around you is going to be 6 percent more expensive. We have to do it for that reason.

We also have to do it as a totality of the planning. We, prior to this inflation coming up, we tell people, we listen. You want some money on the sideline that is not invested for particularly in a reason that we’re talking about, that you have access to it. We need a different strategy.

You mentioned at the top of the show about the dynamic nature of planning. This is one of those things where we’re bringing tremendous value to clients’ lives. Now being able to help them with dynamic elements, like the world has changed a little bit, the ground shifted underneath you a little bit.

One of the things we have to account for is that 100,000, 150,000 dollars that you might have had on the sideline in CDs, or they’re in the savings account for a rainy day. Maybe shouldn’t be there.

What should we do instead? It’s a big part of what we’re doing about all these conversations that we’re having coming into the new year.

Mark:  Federal Reserve Chair, Jerome Powell, has said, in probably early January or late December, “Hey, we’re probably going to raise interest rates once in 2022, once in 2023, once in 2024. Now, the Fed is coming out saying, “Hey, we might raise interest rates three or four times this year.” How does that affect us?

Victor:  Not only are they going to be doing that, but since we don’t know what the amounts are going to be. They usually do it one‑quarter of a percent. They usually don’t make big swings off of it.

As they’re starting to change, what those interest rates look like, and since we don’t know exactly what the numbers are going to be, what does that mean for us as planners? It means the same thing that it meant when we started doing our planning, which is that we’ve got to keep as many avenues open for the future as we possibly can.

We can’t have so much cemented in stone that we know for sure that if it goes this way, we’re perfect. If it changes, we’re not going to be OK. We’re thinking about how to keep avenues open so that we can jump in and out of different strategies, or at least account for the ground shifting underneath us.

What you were talking about, and just changes in the Fed rates and how that’s going to sprinkle and affect the general lending rates and different things that around that. There’s one of those elements that we’ve got to balance very carefully.

Mark:  I don’t want you to get too cocky today. Then, I don’t want everybody to think that you know everything. I’m going to ask you a couple quick trivia questions to see your knowledge. Knock you down a peg, so you feel bad before I do.

Victor:  I hate this. I don’t know why you don’t like me, Mark, or why you set me up for these all the time?

Mark:  Here’s an easy one. I’m going to start with the easier one first. When did Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, start the iPhone? It was after 2000.

Victor:  I think that we were 15 years ago. It was in 2006.

Mark:  Very good, but it was 2007. I’m going to give you an, “Yes.” I’m going to give you that was a good one. All right, now we know the national debt right now is under $30 trillion. Do you have any idea when the national debt reached zero dollars for the first time?

We’re going back to 1776 when it all started. The national debt reached zero for the first time. I’ll give you a little hint. It was goal set by President Andrew Jackson to pay off the nation’s entire debt. I know you know the Presidents what years they were in office.

[laughter]

Victor:  Not a chance. I have to go. Where’s Google for me? Prior to 1975.

Mark:  It was 1835 when the national debt reached zero for the first time. We’re not even 30 trillion, past that yet. It’s crazy.

Victor:  I don’t even know what that number means, 30 trillion. I can’t even conceptualize what it is.

Mark:  When you think about trillion seconds to count. This is a crazy stat, to count one trillion seconds, 1,000, one, 1,000, two, 1,000, three. It would take you over 31,000 years to do so. How about that?

Victor:  That’s nuts. There’s an order of a multiple, where a billion seconds sounds more reasonable. Like you would think, “Oh, that’s only 100 years. That must mean a trillion second is more like 400 years.” Whatever it was. It’s off of it. It’s to that number of 3,100 years, something like. It’s insane.

Mark:  It’s 31,688 years, 269 days, and one hour to complete that task. We don’t need you to figure all that. We don’t need you to start counting to one trillion in seconds right now.

If you do have questions about where you are on your road to retirement, how does inflation…Is it going to affect you? Do you have an income plan? Do you have an investment strategy for retirement? What about tax strategies going forward? What about an estate plan? There’s a lot of moving parts here.

The team at Palante Wealth and Medina Law Group are here to help you. That’s what they’re here for, is to help you. They don’t know if they can help you. That’s why there’s no cost for you to give them a call. It’ll be crazy to charge you for something that they can’t even help you with.

If they can help you, they’ll tell you how they can help you, and then you decide together does it make sense to become a client of the teams, Medina Law Group or Palante Wealth, and or both?

It’s about the situation. Can they help you? They don’t know until you call them. 856‑506‑8300 is the number. 856‑506‑8300. We’re getting started with Victor Medina in “Make It Last.” We’re back with more right after this.

Mark:  Glad you’re with us today for Make It Last with Victor Medina of Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth. Victor focuses on traditional estate planning, asset protection, retirement distribution, proactive income, tax planning.

If you have any questions about any of this as it pertains to you and your family, give the team a call. There’s no cost. It’s 856‑506‑8300. 856‑506‑8300. I’m Mark Elliot. Glad you’re with us today.

Victor, let’s talk a little bit about the IRA, 401(k), world. It’s amazing to think about the amount of money that Americans have in something like a traditional IRA. In 2020, the total value of all those accounts in traditional IRAs in the country was more than $19 trillion nationally.

In 2020, you would think with the pandemic and everything, there’s probably even a little bit more in there, at this point. How do you look at IRAs, 401(k)s, 403(b)s, 457s?

There’s all these things that we usually put in our retirement tool belt to help us in retirement. There’s some positives and there’s some negatives, I would suppose.

Victor:  Yeah. I remember what the history about this was. The introduction of these defined contribution plans, ones where we were contributing our own money, were a way of replacing what were defined benefit plans.

That’s when the company provided for us a safety net, a way of retiring with a cushion in the form traditionally of a pension that was created for you, and some for you…

[crosstalk]

Mark:  Of course, when they did all this…Let me give you some…but I don’t want to put you on the spot again. IRA started in 1974. 401(k) started in 1978, really went into action in the early ’80s. The idea was the 401(k) was going to supplement your pension. The employer said, “Ooh. We can do a little bit better.”

[crosstalk]

Victor:  I don’t have to do anything.

Mark:  Then, the Roth IRA started in 1997 and the Roth 401(k) in 1998. They feel like they have been around forever but they, obviously, haven’t.

Victor:  No, they haven’t but enough of the people that are entering retirement now are of the generation where they don’t have a pension. Unless they work in public service, unless they are in law enforcement, some outwork for places that strong unions, where they kept that benefit in there, we don’t see a pension.

We don’t see pensions part of the retirement plan from those people. We are working with their retirement fund. We start to think about it. It is that nest egg that was created or a way of creating your own nest egg as what you were saving for your own retirement.

You mentioned the difference between pluses and minuses. On the one hand, what I like about them is that, often, they give us a lot of flexibility on how we structure our retirement. We talked about the loss of pension as though it’s a terrible thing. One of the restrictions or the downsides of pensions that we got a fixed income for the rest of our lives that probably never went up.

Things got more expensive. We have to figure out how to make do with exactly the same money even though it wasn’t stretching as far as before. Having some flexibility around your retirement plan, how you design and how you created your paycheck retirement, is great. What is the downside of that is that, everyone was sold.

That when you retire, your taxes are going to be lower than they are when you’re working, but that pre‑supposed that you are going to be spending a lot less. People want to spend what they were spending similar, what they were spending when they were working because they want to enjoy their time.

They were doing the same thing every day, Saturday. They want to spend the money tender. What we find is, because the withdrawals from traditional IRAs, 401(k)s, and 403(b)s are taxable income, people have taxes that are as high as they were when they were working. It also means that we have to do a lot of tax planning for them.

There are pluses and minus to the way these things are structured, but I think that it’s probably fair to say that the majority of clients that are coming in and were visiting are people that have planning around their 401(k)s, 403(b), and traditional IRAs as their main nest egg going into retirement.

That’s what we’re seeing almost exclusive these days.

Mark:  Which is really interesting when you think about it because my grandparents say retired with pensions, my parents retired with pensions, I don’t have a pension. Is this baby boomer generation that’s retiring now from the 401k and IRA world, are they going to be the highest tax retirees ever?

Victor:  It looks that way and not just because the tax rates are increasing that we’ve got a tax rate that’s going to come back up in 2026 that it’s going to higher, it’s going to visit on these retirees that began, I think the baby boomer starter are retiring about 10,000 of them turning 65.

I think probably 2015, 2016 is when they start on and it’s going to continue to 2040. What we going to find is that if those tax rates increase in 2026 as they are projected to do, they in fact, maybe the highest tax generation in retirement.

That’s a combination of all kinds of things. One of them revolves that people who are retired know, is that your social security which was promised to you as being tax free to you when it was created is now taxable.

How much of it is taxable is driven by how much other money is taxable in your retirement check coming out. If you going to take a lot of money out of your IRA, more of your social security is going to be taxed.

These baby boomers are not just being taxed on the money that they save, but the money that they have contributed and earned in their social security as what’s coming out. They are paying taxes twice as on that could very well be that they are the highest tax generation.

Mark:  Help me with my math here, but baby boomer generation is are those born 1946 to 1964, that means, and here’s how we do math in the old way, 46 plus 60 is ’06 plus another five to get the 65. That’s 2011. Are you with me on that?

Victor:  Yeah.

Mark:  2011 is when the first baby boomer started hitting the age of 65. Then ever since is been 10,000 turning 65 every single year is pretty crazy.

Victor:  Massive number. It’s going to continue on till the year 2040. All of these people. If you are in this generation, you’re going to benefit from having great retirement planning at your back.

If you need to figure out how to create a paycheck in retirement, if you need to figure out how to manage your taxes, if you need to figure out how to allocate your investments to match all of this stuff, the better educated you are, the better advice that you have, the better chance you have to having a successful retirement.

Mark:  This is exactly what Palante Wealth is all about and the Medina Law Group to help you in these areas ‑‑ income planning, investment strategies, tax efficient strategies, estate planning. 856‑506‑8300, if you’d like to learn more about this. Do you have enough, can you retire or when can you retire?

Will your loved ones be OK if something happens to you? Those are big‑big questions. How do you figure this all out? That’s what Victor and the teams are here to do is help you with this. 856‑506‑8300. Again, no cost for this call. 856‑506‑8300. The teams can help, just don’t know they can.

When you think about it, my grandparents, for example, with two pensions, and two social securities. Income was never an issue for them. Now, they didn’t have huge pensions and huge security benefits, I’m sure, but they didn’t live a very grandiose lifestyle. They’d love to sit on there.

They had a little lake house. When the tornado blew their house away in Kansas in 1966, they got a little lake house. They would go sit on the dock and read a book and watch people ski or what have you. It was a really late, they weren’t traveling the world and doing all of those things that today’s retirees tend to do.

Today’s retirees, I would think income is the bigger challenge because they don’t have pensions, compared to my grandparents with pensions and social security. They had guaranteed forms of income coming in all the time. They had other issues, but income was not really their issue.

Today’s retiree, seems to me, it’s about income. How do we find out? How do we create income to maintain our lifestyle?

Victor:  I wouldn’t disagree with it, Mark. I think that income’s a big part of what they’re doing, especially because it’s not something that’s been done for them. Social security is typically not enough to cover your expenses in retirement whether you want two or three lake houses and to travel everywhere, or you just want to maintain a normal life.

Social security is not going to make that. Creating an income stream from your investments probably is a big thing. I will tell you that one of the things that’s often overlooked is the tax planning component of it too because your business partner in retirement is the IRS.

If you’re not very careful about how you manage your taxes, you have this risk of using too much, you’re using it inefficiently, when you’re creating your own check in retirement. It’s there in combination to put them at equal weighting is not only creating their income, but also being able to manage.

I would say this, most people aren’t thinking about the tax component of it, where they’re thinking about it after the fact. When they’re preparing their taxes in the next year, they’re not thinking about as a proactive manner.

That’s really where we see a lot of value that we’re bringing to clients is we can sit down and have a conversation with you, about how can you get the best tax profile today. Before you have to file taxes next year, you maximize what you’re getting out of the check that you’re creating for retirement. We actually did something to help people with this and to start the conversation.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to manage your taxes in retirement, we created a website with a downloadable white paper that you can go through and start to learn a little bit more about how to manage your taxes, get the best picture for you going forward. That’s available at 920taxes.com.

You go to 920taxes.com. You enter in your name and your email. We will send to you for free a report on how to manage taxes in retirement so you understand a little bit more about that picture. That you can be one of these ones that are actually thinking about taxes, as well as how to create an income stream.

Mark:  Now, that’s really nice to get some great information, 920taxes.com. Because my grandparents didn’t have to worry about income, and they really didn’t have to worry about taxes either. Their taxes were going down when they got into retirement.

Today, we’re challenged with trying to create our income from our tools and our retirement tool belt. Not our companies tool so much. Then taxes are going to be up because we have all this tax deferred money. We’re going to talk about that in the next time when we get into a little bit about RMDs and those things and how those all play out.

Talk a little bit about the Roth IRA world, the Roth 401(k) world. Everybody loves the idea of having tax‑free money, but not everybody should take advantage of the Roth world because it might not make sense for them. It’s not a general statement, “Hey, everybody should move money into the Roth world,” you have to do some deciphering.

Does it make sense for them or not? Then if so, how do we go about doing it?

Victor:  I think that one of the things that’s an important metric is what your taxes are going to be after the conversion. If it turns out that in the course of converting money from a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA you incur higher taxes than if you had stretched out slowly over time. Then it may not make sense.

There are planning situations where we’re taking advantage. For example, of the expiring tax brackets or tax rates as they are till 2026. We have a little bit of an advantage, where even if you’re going to be in the same bracket, your tax rates going to go up in 2026. We’re doing some Roth conversions for those folks.

I think one of the nice things about Roth’s that…I’ll give you little tip is that people are often encouraged to hear. In the past when they were working, they may not have had a lot in their Roth IRA or Roth 401(k) because they made too much money. They were told, “You make too much to contribute to a Roth.” They might think to themselves, “Well, the Roth’s not for me, because I made too much money.”

That is the Roth contribution rules. There’s actually a different set of rules if you want to convert money into a Roth, and those rules are wide open for everybody. If you want to convert money from a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA, you are allowed to do that, regardless of the income that you had in the past, regardless of where it started.

If you’re willing to pay the taxes, you can go into that account. There are only a couple of rules about that. You have to leave it alone for five years or pay some penalties.

We have to think about this from a timing perspective, we can’t put it into the Roth and then needed immediately. That’s where the planning comes in for folks to make sure that it’s an appropriate thing for them.

I always like diversifying people’s tax investments or tax qualified investments, so that we have options between things that are taxed like ordinary income to things that are taxed like capital gains at lower rates to things that are taxed at zero in a Roth IRA rates. That tax diversification is just as important as investment diversification.

For you to have the best options going forward, I’ll give you a really practical reason for that, your Medicare premiums are set by the amount of taxable income that you have.

If you can lower that over time, or as you get older, if you can keep that steady by pulling from a tax free account, you’re going to have a much better picture when it comes to how much you have to contribute in your Medicare premiums.

Mark:  Again, if you would like the white paper that Victor and the team have put together for you, all you have to do is go to 920taxes.com. You put in your email, your information, they’ll send you that. There’s no cost for this whatsoever.

Be some great information there for you, if you have some questions about this area. 920taxes.com. If you want to actually sit down with a team at Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth and come up with your income plan, your investment strategy, your tax efficient strategy moving forward, your estate plan, all those moving parts.

Social security, when and how do I do it? What about Medicare? What do I do? There’s a lot of questions here. The teams at Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth are here to help. There’s no cost for this call. It’s just they’re here to help.

If they can’t help you, they might give you some advice though on where to go for some help. Maybe it’s not a good fit between the two of you or maybe there’s some ideas they have right away and say, “Hey, what do you think?” Because it’s just a feeling out. It’s getting it to know you type situation.

It’s an opportunity for you to get some questions answered. Some concerns may be alleviated a little bit. It’s 856‑506‑8300.

Now, we know the rules of requirement of distributions have changed since 2020 to today. What are those? What do they mean? Why do we care about required minimum distributions at all anyway? We’re going to have Victor talk about that when we come back. This is “Make It Last” with Victor Medina of Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth. Back right after this.

Mark:  Welcome back to Make It Last with Victor Medina of Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth. I’m Mark Elliott. Medina Law Group certainly can help you with all of your estate planning, your certified law, things you need. What all would be Medina Law Group, the things that we need would be powers of attorney and so forth, wills, trust. How does that all work?

Victor:  We would look at getting your legal ducks in a row. We would be focused on making sure that if you became incapacitated, you didn’t have a hiccup about your family being able to manage your affairs and for people that are growing older that are concerned maybe if they get Alzheimer’s that they don’t lose all of their money having to pay an assisted‑living facility.

That kind of asset protection is a big part of what Medina Law Group can help you put together in terms of your plan.

Mark:  You find out more on the website, medinalawgroup.com, M‑E‑D‑I‑N‑A, medinalawgroup.com. Now your sister company, Palante Wealth, what would you say the focus of that is?

Victor:  Medina Law Group’s about getting your ducks in a row, then Palante Wealth would be about making sure nest egg is secure. What we’re doing is making sure that people can rest well, sleep easy, knowing that they have a great retirement plan, so that they know that they have enough money to last the rest of their lives.

Mark:  Palantewealth.com, P‑A‑L‑A‑N‑T‑E, palantewealth.com. Victor, of course, the author of five books on retirement planning under his acclaimed Make It Last series. I’m Mark Elliot, glad you’re with us today for Make It Last with Victor Medina.

We’re talking about 401(k)s and IRAs today. Certainly, we’re just talking about the Roth world. Really the nice ability to have tax‑free money in retirement, but you do have to pay the taxes whenever you take an IRA or 401(k), and you go, “OK, I want to move that into the Roth world.” We got to pay taxes on the money you’re moving, so there’s no way of getting around the taxes.

It’s just when are you going to pay them when you know what the tax rates are, or when you’re not really sure where they’re going, but you’re pretty confident they’re going to go higher. Because we know the Trump tax all those 2018 expires at the end of 2025, 2026, we revert back to the ’17 tax rates in brackets.

But the Biden administration certainly been talking about taxes. We’ll see where that all goes. There’s a lot of moving parts here. The required minimum distribution age, with a Secure Act of 2020, change from 70 and a half to 72. It’s 72 is when the IRS says, “Hey, we let you start with your seed and now you’re harvested your accounts, we want some of our money now,” which makes sense.

If you were a farmer, you’d rather pay the taxes on the seed rather than the harvest. The government actually was thinking ahead, going, “Yeah, we don’t want your seed money, we want to harvest money.” That’s how that played out.

So that’s a reason if you’re 50, 55, 60, 65, you’ve got some time before you hit that age of 72 to move some of this money, if it makes sense?

Victor:  Yeah, that’s the nice thing is that even though you are required to take it out at 72, you’re permitted to take it out after age 59 and a half without any additional penalty. It might be in your best interest to do that. You might actually want to be more proactive, about moving money out, let’s say before you claim Social Security, before you’ve got more money filling the bucket.

When you have to pay taxes, it might be to your benefit to do that. Because a lot of people think about this delay to age 72 as though it’s a universal win. I try to tell people, I’m not sure that that’s the case because even though you didn’t have to take money out in ages 70 and 71, that balance grew over those next few years.

They didn’t change the percentage of what needs to come out. You might have a bigger number at age 72 with a higher percentage that has to come out. That taxes you might actually be more, you might be in a new tax bracket.

You really have to quantify these things and not think about them as the surface level sales pitch you’re being given about why you may or may not be winning. I think that one of the things that is often overlooked in the Secure Act is that although they delayed it for the people who own traditional IRAs, or 401(k)s and they put that age to 72.

What they gave, they take away, they take away the ability for your beneficiaries, your children to stretch out that money over their life expectancy. In fact, the federal government who so much wants to tax your harvest is saying that you got to bring your harvest out over 10 years when you leave that account behind.

That’s another reason to think about a little bit more proactively these accounts, because for you, you may not need a lot of the money that’s in your 401(k) or IRA to live.

If you just let that balance grow and you leave it to your kids, they might be paying a whole mess more taxes than you could have paid for them and leaving them behind some tax‑free money if you had just been a little more thoughtful about what you were doing.

That’s a big part about what we do, Mark, like when we create and Make‑It‑Last plan, there’s an element of it.

If you were to call us and you reach out and say, “Hey, I want to plan put together for me,” I would look at not only what we were doing to manage your taxes today, but also manage your children’s taxes when they inherit your money afterwards.

What do you creating as a legacy? That’s why each one of those four pillars is so important when we think about income, investment, taxes, and estate planning, they are all working together to get you the best plan overall for you during your lifetime, for your kids after you’re gone, and really trying to manage all of the moving parts so that you get the best possible result with what we’re starting with.

Mark:  Again, if you’d like to learn more about this required minimum of distributions. Maybe you’re 70, you’re like, “Wow, I didn’t even know how to do those, I don’t even need that money. I don’t even need to take it.” We’re going to talk about that here in just a second. The number is 856‑506‑8300. It’s a great opportunity for you to learn more about your specific situation.

Every Make It Last plan is about whomever Victor and the team is sitting down with and talking about. There’s not a blanket statement for those in New Jersey and those in Pennsylvania. You get two different plans because the state you’re in. No, that’s not how it works. It’s about you, your hopes and dreams for your retirement, what makes the most sense for you. 856‑506‑8300.

Back to the stretch IRA. For example, my daughter is 21. If I died and left her my $100 she would have had, say her life expectancy was 86. She would have 65 years to take that $100 out in little portions, if she wanted to, without paying big taxes on that. You say a million dollars, that’s a different story when it comes to taxes, obviously, than 100.

Let’s say for example, that it was a million dollars. She had 65 years to pull some of that money out and pay taxes on it year after year after year. She didn’t get pounded at any particular time. She controlled how she was going to do that. Use the money that I left, but then use it without getting killed tax‑wise.

Victor:  Not just that, Mark, because what she was doing is that the amount that she had to take out was so small that the gains that she was making in that account allowed it to grow. Even though she might only take two percent, if she was making six percent in particular year, I meant the balance was going up year after year.

That was one of the brilliant things about the stretch IRA, is that you could actually grow this money, tax‑deferred because even the required amount that you had to take out was so small, it’s now impacted. That’s the other part, because I know where you’re going next with it, but I want to make sure that we’re clear that there is another benefit to that stretch IRA in total balance growing too.

Mark:  That’s a good one though. That’s a good point. Which is why you’re the star of the show, and you’re the advisor and I’m not. That was a good one, though. I like that. Obviously, if I left her a million dollars at 21 and I died this year, now she’s got until 31 to pull that million dollars out. She could do it all at once.

She could do a hundred grand a year, I suppose, but there’s a lot of taxes. When you leave money to a child that’s now in their 30s or 40s, hopefully they’re doing well. You’ve just added to their tax burden a little bit. It’s a great thing you could leave them money, but you can cause some headaches too.

Victor:  I want you to think about it this way. When we talk about taxes being the same in retirement the reason is that you’re no longer working and getting a salary, but you’re creating the salary from your savings and you’re living on the same amount.

Imagine if you were still working and you were taking out exactly the same amount of money from your IRA, if you doubled your salary and you pay taxes on double the amount of that money. That’s what your kids are going to be doing.

Because, unlike you, they not only inherited the IRA that you left behind, and have to clear it out after 10 years, but they’re also making their own wage living as well, which means that the tax rate on the savings that you left behind is going to be higher than it was for you.

That’s the big impact of compressing this time period into 10 years, is that people who you’re leaving this money to are likely still working, which means that their buckets are already filled on income taxes. Now this just spills it over into higher and higher tax brackets, and that’s the impact of it.

As you were saying before, you could take it all out at once. You could take at equal portions over 10 years. You could take nothing for 10 years, and then be forced to take it what it grew to 10 years later, all out at once, and paying even higher one. This is why we have to think about this with such short of like you don’t swing a sledgehammer in this business, Mark.

You come at things with a scalpel and you really think about them very deliberately. When we have people that have Roth IRA accounts, I tell them that we’re going to tell their kids not to touch it for 10 years, because that Roth IRA account comes out tax‑free. I want it to grow tax‑free for 10 years, and then be withdrawn all at once.

On the traditional IRA, I want their kids to be paying at the lower tax rate, which may actually mean that either the parents are taking it out a little bit, or I’m talking to the kids about taking a little bit every year. We’re going to come out this with a more nuanced approach.

We’re not just going to swing around unless you say, “Hey, it would be really great if I could only do two plans, Mark, a Pennsylvania plan and a New Jersey plan. My work would be so much easier.” It would be easy if we could just say here’s your one plan for your IRA, overall.

It’s going to be the same thing even when we talk about the tax planning and the legacy, for the legacy for your kids going behind you. It’s going to be a different plan for the different accounts that you have so that we get you the best overall result. That’s the value of working with an advisor.

I’m going to tell you something if you’re listening right now and you are not getting this in your life, if you’re not in a position where you feel comfortable that you’re getting the absolute best retirement advice so that you’re maximizing this for your benefit and for your kids, I’m going to encourage you to reach out and see if we might be a good fit for us.

You give a call. 856‑506‑8300. Give us a call on the team. Let us know that you’re interested. There is absolutely no pressure. It is an easy conversation. There’s no charge off of it. If we’re a great fit for you personality‑wise, a good relationship as a counselor going forward, we know we’re going to do great work for you in terms of putting a plan together.

Mark:  856‑506‑8300. Just remember, the Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth serve the Pennington greater Mercer County areas as well as Bucks County. Clients in New Jersey. Clients in Pennsylvania. They’re here to help. 856‑506‑8300.

Let’s finish this up. We’ve got about three and a half minutes left in this segment before we wrap it all up in the next one. The in‑service distribution of a 401(k), that was something that…

I was never in the financial world, so I didn’t even know that was a thing. Can you talk a little bit about an in‑service distribution of your 401(k)? Maybe you’re going to retire at 65, but might be a time for you to take a little bit more control over that 401(k), how does that work?

Victor:  Hey, listen. We’re the same because when all I was doing is practicing law, I had no idea about the in‑service distribution either. It was something that became powerful as a planning tool for folks.

Here’s what it is. Traditionally, when you were contributing to your 401(k) and you were still working, you wouldn’t think about moving that account until you left the job. A lot of people have that when they move across jobs. They’ve got dormant 401(k)s, they roll them over.

If you’re working, you’re getting close to retirement, you may not be thinking about moving that money until you retire. You might say, “OK. Listen. When I leave my job, when I finally retire, I’ll think about doing something else with it.”

You’re permitted if the plan documents allow this to move that money and say as early as age 55 in some cases, often at age 59 and a half or older. In the benefit of doing that, the benefit about thinking about making an in‑service mean you’re still working.

Rollover of this 401(k) is that most 401(k)s are limited on the investment choices that you have. They got a menu but the restaurant they only got four things on there. Sometimes those things are not the best things for you. Sometimes they’re a little bit more expensive than they need to be.

What we can do by rolling this over while we’re doing planning, even though you’re still working, you’re not retired yet but we’re working with you as your advisor. Then we say, “Hey, listen. If we make an in‑service distribution of this money to a traditional IRA, we are going to open up the doors. [laughs]

“It’s going to be like the Cheesecake Factory. Their menu is 40 pages. We’re going to have at our disposal 40 pages of different investments that we can get into. Some of them may be more appropriate for you as you’re getting close to retirement than the ones in which you were accumulating assets building for retirement.” This is the plan.

It makes sense that you would have to change your strategy if what you’re moving from is accumulating assets to distributing assets. As we approach distribution phase of what we’re doing, it may make sense to choose from different investment options and get better choices that we have by making that rollover.

Again, that’s going to be on a case‑by‑case basis. It’s not universal to everyone. That’s one of the benefits of coming in and doing a plan that’s just for you, that’s specific to your needs. It may be in your case if you’re still working and you got a 401(k), then we’re recommending a rollover because that’s the best thing for you.

Mark:  When you think about it, that all came out of the great recession if you will. ’07, ’09 401(k)s, were becoming 201(k)s and workers are going, “Wait, they lost half my money and I didn’t have any say in that. I couldn’t do anything to stop that.”

They put this in there to give you the ability once you’re 59 and a half to start taking control of your money a little bit. You certainly have to do it the right way. You don’t have the check say, “Victor Medina, that’s not going to work.”

It’s got to go from the custodian at your place of work to the custodian you’re going to move it to. There’s no taxes whatsoever. The nice thing about it, let’s say you’re 60 and you’re going to retire at 65, that gives you 5 years to put that 401(k) money in a place that you want it to be, to help you be in a better position to retire at 65.

You still have 5 years of taking advantage of the company match. It’s not like you stopped the 401(k), you’re still working, you’re still taking advantage of it. There’s a lot here Victor and the team would love to show you that you may not understand and may not know about. It’s a great opportunity for you to learn more.

856‑506‑8300 is the number. There’s no cost for this call whatsoever. You can do a Zoom call. You can do a phone call. You can do an in‑person. It’s your choice. What you are most comfortable with. 856‑506‑8300.

It’s a great time to find out where you are on your road to retirement. In‑service distribution, does it make sense? “I can’t do a stretch IRA. What can I do?” Find out, the teams are here to help. 856‑506‑8300. Glad you’re with us today for “Make It Last” with Victor Medina of Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth. We’ve got one segment to go. It’ll be fun. I guarantee you. We’re back right after this.

Mark:  Welcome back to “Make It Last” with Victor Medina of Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth. You have any questions about where you are on your road to retirement?

Hey, Victor, when can I retire? Do I have enough? Will the money last as long as I do? Will my loved ones going to be OK, if something happens to me? At the end of the day, you just want to know, when you retire will you and your family be OK? Can you maintain your lifestyle?

Those are big questions and the teams at Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth are here to help then create that Make It Last plan ‑‑ income strategies, investment strategies, tax‑efficient strategies, estate planning. The teams are here to help you, 856‑506‑8300. If you’d like to learn more, 856‑506‑8300.

All right. My question to you to start this, we’re going to do a little mailbag segment. Most people when they call your team or come into the office, they might just want to say “Hi,” but typically they’ve got some questions or they’ve got some concerns. Would that be fair to say?

Victor:  Yeah, usually there’s something that’s keeping them up at night, and they’re worried about. People are pretty smart these days and they can use Google effectively.

They have questions. They know the questions that they’re asking, but they don’t necessarily are confident about the answers they can get and if they are confident, they’re not calling us. If they think that they need some second opinion, let’s say, or to make sure that they’re on the right track, that’s usually coming in with something of that kind of stuff.

What’s interesting about the conversations that we have with people, Mark, is that we begin with the questions that we have and we enjoy when we start to introduce new questions. We always get from clients, “I didn’t think about that. That’s a really good point, we should be thinking about that too.”

That’s where I feel like we’re bringing a ton of values, that we’re bringing new questions for them to think about. Now they’re feeling great because they don’t have to worry that they don’t know other questions. We’re asking all the questions that they need answers to, and then we’re helping them provide answers as well.

Mark:  Now, I’m not saying if this is true or not, but some of these questions may or may not have come from the holiday tour of the Jersey Transit a capella group when Victor was out leading the team in the holiday carols.

Victor:  They didn’t put money in the tip jar. They put questions, Frequently Asked Questions for the radio show.

Mark:  Here you go. We got four questions lined up for Victor. The first question comes from David in New Town. “Victor, I worked at the same company for 25 years. I had a 401(k) there, but they had a big merger. Now I’m not sure how to track down that account. Do you have any tips?”

Victor:  Yeah, listen, David. I totally sympathize. I’ve worked for companies that have been bought out by other companies. In fact, one of the funniest things that I did, and I do that with a “tongue in cheek” is that when I started managing money for people, and I became a financial advisor, my first client was my wife.

Trying to accumulate all of her dormant accounts was an exercise that really took a lot of time. You have my sympathies there. There’s going to be a couple of things that you can do, by the way. All 401(k) plans are what they consider to be safe harbor plans, a technical term, which means that all of the paperwork for them was filed with the Department of Labor just to make sure that they are on the up and up.

They talk about the assets that they have, the disclosures and the information that they send their participants and whatnot. Every year they required to file something called a Form 5500. When they dissolve the plan or when the plan is assumed by someone else, there’s actually a plan of dissolution or merger that’s also a publicly available document.

One of the things that you want to do is start to look for that information and if you’re stuck, by the way, we can help you with that. If you want to give us a call, I think the number is 856‑506‑8300. If you want to give us a call, we can start that conversation with you, help you lock that down, and maybe even give you a second opinion about what you had there.

Whether or not you want to move it, what do you want to move it to, put it in your new 401(k), put as part of a traditional IRA. Any of those things, but you can definitely find this information. It was required to either be returned to you or held protected. I’m confident that that money is available.

Mark:  Here’s I’m not sure where it is. It’s not lost. There’s a way to track it down so that’s good information.

All right. The next question comes from Sharon in Hillsborough. “Victor, I’ve got a pretty good job keeping track of my budget and my finances, my entire adult life, I think. Why is it so important to have someone else do this for me in retirement?”

Victor:  Oh, that’s an interesting question because I’m almost of the same mind that it took me a while to do budgeting as an adult. I think the reason for that is that as a working person, I was always able to make the next dollar, especially as a lawyer’s cause, I own my own business. Now, as a financial advisor. I have another check coming in. I have ways of making other checks.

The difference that happens is that when you get to your retirement phase when you’re approaching retirement, your budget is something that is going to determine how long your money is going to last.

We know that we have to spend X dollars per month, and we start to budget in things like increases for inflation, which we know is a big topic today in these days. If we have to start to budget all of that, we are going to get an answer to a math problem about how long that money is going to last.

If it turns out that it doesn’t last as long as you want to last, if you want to live longer than what that money is, we have to do a little bit different budgeting off of it. It’s an important exercise to watch the dollars that are coming out.

Now, in my own personal philosophy, I think there’s a benefit to not thinking about this as to every dime that goes out. When I think about its chunks, the way I think about is a bank of dollars that’s available to you.

There’s going to be some dynamic elements to this as your account values go up. If we’re successful with investments and things like that for you, maybe have a little bit more money to spend than what we originally budgeted.

It is an important exercise to go through, to see where your dollars are going. Just to make sure that you can gain the confidence and that we can gain confidence for you as your advisor. That we can make this money last based on what we’re starting with.

It can seem tedious but there are a lot of tools out there that will, first of all, bring in your spending habits from the past. That’d be a good starting point from that so you’re not just starting from zero.

We might want to devise a plan that helps that budget look better in the future. For example, we might want to have a part of the budget that helps you keep more money because we’ve helped you address taxes so you pay less in taxes. We might want to help you with paying off your home or downsizing your home to help you have lower expenses.

There are things that we can affect and tweak. Just because you set a budget doesn’t mean it’s the only thing that’s in there, there might be little doubts that we can turn. It’s an important beginning exercise.

By the way, it’s one of the things that we start with all of our clients, Mark. When they come in, and we start a conversation with clients about how to do retirement, one of the first things we said is, what’s your expected budget? Sometimes we’ll actually have them go through the exercise, line items.

What are you going to spend on this? What are you going to spend on this? What are you going to spend this? It gives them the first chance to think about that. Then we can help them come to that point in time to say, with this it will work for you or it won’t work for you based on what you expect. We can tweak and work with that together.

We’re partners with our clients. We’ll help you get to where you need to be, but we’re working together. I need some information from you like where’s the money going to go?

Mark:  Sharon, that’s why there’s no cost to chat with the teams at Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth. They don’t know if they can help you, and so it’s a great opportunity for you just to take some time which is important.

Our time, we’re limited in how much time we have left, but take the time to come in and sit down with the team. Maybe you sit down for an hour.

You go, “Yeah, I think I’m doing good” and they might tell you, “Hey, you’re doing a great job. Keep doing what you’re doing,” but wouldn’t you rather know if there’s some areas that you could improve upon before you get into retirement? I would think so.

Sharon, if you want to chat with the teams 856‑506‑8300. It’s painless. It really is. They’re here to help, 856‑506‑8300.

All right, this question comes from Pete in Yardley and this is a good question, I think. I want to hear this answer. What is your best advice, Victor, for someone who is 10 years away from retirement and does not want to make any big financial mistakes?

Victor:  Pete, is it too transparent? The best advice is you should give us a call so you can start a relationship with a great financial advisor to plan for retirement. Then it’s probably too transparent.

Yeah, I know. I think I can leave it there. I’m going to be required to give Pete a better answer than that. Pete, you should call us, 856‑506‑8300. You should call us. OK.

What is your best advice off of it? The first part of that advice has to come with this understanding, which is that it’s never too early to begin your planning. The best advice that I have is that 10 years is the appropriate time to be thinking about it.

I don’t want you waiting another five years before you start to pick up the ball and think about how you’re going to have a successful retirement. The best advice that I have as a substantive matters, so beyond the idea that the 10 years is the right thing comes down to this.

It’s going to be something that resonates with a lot of you in the audience. You get this conceptually. Now, I just want to have you understand this so that you can then take action to help put this in place and it’s the following.

The action is the behavior. The things that got you to the point of having a nest egg are not necessarily the same things that you need to be doing to save, spend, and protect that nest egg. It basically comes down to this, which you did to accumulate your nest egg it may not be the same things that you do to distribute your nest egg afterwards.

If I can get you to understand that, you understand that there’s going to be a difference, because we get this recency bias.

We get this confirmation bias. We’ve been so successful in accumulating assets that we think that that’s all that we need to do to continue in retirement to be successful, and it’s not the case.

We’ve worked with so many families where by shifting their thought process they were able to weather the recession. Whether a downturn in the economy, whether it changed in their life circumstances, they may have needed long‑term care all of a sudden, because somebody had Alzheimer’s, and the plan that we put in place provided for them, for example, an access to a long‑term care benefit as part of an insurance plan that we put in place.

They didn’t even think they were going to need it at the time, but all of a sudden, it’s there for them. There are so many circumstances that are going to be a shift on the behavior that got you here.

I’m going to encourage you that if you’re in this position right now, if you’re thinking about retirement, you may be 10, 5 years away. Maybe you’re just on the verge of retiring, maybe you retired just as a result of the pandemic and you’re thinking about, are you going to have the very best plan?

If you want to know that the thing that you shifted to, or if you’ve recognized that you are doing the same thing you were doing before but you know now that you have to shift to something. If you want to know that you’ve got the very best plan in place, I’m going to encourage you to reach out to us. Give us a call at 856‑506‑8300.

Start the conversation. We will help you determine whether or not you have a good plan. We’re going to share with you our plan. It’s going to cost nothing through that and if you love what you hear, we want to be the people to help implement that and be your partners in retirement.

You won’t know whether or not you’re on the right path, but it’s the path that we think you should be on unless you begin that conversation. You’ve been listening to the show long enough to recognize may benefit from having that discussion with us, you should reach out. Give us a call. Phone number 856‑506‑8300.

Start the conversation. Start yourself on the path to having a great retirement by knowing that you got a great plan in place.

Mark:  Palante Wealth Advisors are an independent financial services firm that utilizes a variety of investment and insurance products. Medina Law Group is an independent estate planning and elder law firm. Investment advisory services are offered through Palante Wealth Advisors LLC in New Jersey and Pennsylvania registered investment advisor.

Registration does not imply a certain level of skill or training. Investing involves risk including the potential loss of principal.

Any references to protection, safety, or lifetime income generally refer to fixed insurance products never securities or investments. Insurance guarantees are backed by the financial strength and claims‑paying abilities of the issuing carrier.

This radio show is intended for informational purposes only. It is not intended to be used as a sole basis for financial decisions nor should it be construed as advice designed to meet the particular needs of an individual situation.

Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth Advisors are not permitted to offer and no statement made during the show shall constitute tax or legal advice. Our firm is not affiliated with or endorsed by the US government or any governmental agency.

The information and opinions contained herein provided by third parties have been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but accuracy and completeness cannot be guaranteed by Medina Law Group and Palante Wealth Advisors.

Transcription by CastingWords

Leave a Reply